This invention relates, in general, to telephone answering machines, and more specifically, to secure voice answering machines.
Throughout the ages, secrecy of information has been important to governments and businesses. Governments attempt to maintain certain information as secret in order to gain advantages over other governments, or to maintain some element of national security. Businesses attempt to keep information secret in order to maintain a competitive advantage over rivals. Private individuals also seek to maintain secrecy over their personal lives.
As telecommunications have advanced, so have new ways of transferring information. Information is transferred at higher rates, in clearer signals, and at farther distances. Not only have ways to transmit information to a receiving party been developed at a tremendous pace, but ways of intercepting the information have been developed and are continually being perfected. information, sensitive or not, communicated through public access systems can be easily intercepted.
To keep the integrity of sensitive information from being compromised, secure voice telecommunication systems are available to both government and business entities. These secure voice telecommunication systems utilize code management schemes to ensure that only those telecommunication systems having access to the same code may communicate together. More advanced secured telephones use key management systems which change the access code with each telephone conversation.
When secured telephones were initially introduced, users had only the basic communication tie between stations. Options such as call waiting, forwarding, conferences, and so forth, were unavailable. Manufacturers of secure telephones have rapidly been incorporating such options/ features to increase the marketability of their products to customers familiar with such features. The present invention discloses one such option-a secured answering machine.